The report on the official Santa Monica Airport (SMO) visioning sessions is now available on the City web site.  This report will be presented at the City Council meeting on the 8th of May, 2012 in the Council Chambers.  Public discussions begin at 6:30PM according to the agenda.  Anyone interested in the visioning process is encouraged to attend.

Link:Santa Monica Municipal Airport Community Visioning Process.
Link:Powerpoint Slides for City Council Presentation

The report was prepared by Moore Iacofono Goltsman (MIG) the facilitators for the process.  A total of 312 participants took place in the sessions and, according to the report, 66% were Santa Monica residents, 31% Los Angeles residents, and 3% from elsewhere.  It should be noted that no attempt was made to validate the reported city of residence at the sessions, and not all attendees specified a city.

Not noted in the report, but easily identified from the text of the ‘Participant Comment Cards’ attached as an appendix, 19% of all attendees stated that they were pilots or members of an aviation advocacy group.  This is consistent with earlier community and press reports of a high percentage of pilot and aviation advocate attendees, most of whom appeared to be quoting from an shared list of talking points.

Section 3 of the report identifies five basic positions, four of which involve significant reduction or elimination of aircraft operations.  The fifth position identified appears to be that of the 19% airport proponents and is essentially business as usual.

Section 4 of the report goes on to describe perceived benefits of SMO as well as the various negative impacts surrounding residents.

Section 5 of the report identifies 8 common themes that emerged from the sessions as follows:

A. Information Depth and Credibility.  Many participants find the information provided by the City concerning the airport and visioning to be lacking, flawed, and frankly misleading.  This theme covers the deep mistrust that has emerged concerning the involvement of city staff in the visioning process, given the perception that they have a clear pro-aviation, anti-resident agenda.  The main takeaway from this theme is the need to remove staff from the process, increase public participation and information, and to involve reputable third party organizations that are allowed to study ALL options, not constrained by staff to considering limited outcomes.

B. Disproportionate Impacts. Many participants feel that SMO is a convenience to the few and the wealthy at the expense of large negative impacts on the lives and health of tax-paying residents.

C. Sustainable “Green” Airport Campus.  Participants feel that SMO is inconsistent with the City’s position as a leader in sustainability and environmental stewardship.  The obvious solution to this common theme would be the significant reduction or elimination of aircraft activity as indicated in the 82% respondent preference for the CASMAT survey (982 respondents) and the 84% respondent preference to the smaller Ocean Park Association (OPA) survey (244 respondents).  The city visioning sessions had a total of 312 participants, less than a third of the CASMAT total.

However, in detailing this ‘green’ theme, the report writer has instead chosen to assume that airport operations continue essentially “as is”, and then details the airport proponent ‘talking point’ list of minor improvements such as auxiliary Power Units, a mid-field run-up area, and ‘patience’ while we wait for fuel technologies to improve.  Installing these minor concessions would require additional investment in the airport aviation operations.  This is in addition to the estimated $2.97 million dollars of capital improvements in the FY 2012/13 budget for such things as runway repairs, new lighting, building maintenance etc.  Why the City continues to make capital investments in aircraft operations at this level while engaged in a ‘visioning’ process that clearly shows 82% of respondents (per CASMAT and OPA surveys) want aircraft operations reduced or eliminated, is not clear.  On the face of it this discord seems to confirm the suspicions detailed in theme ‘A’ above.

D. The “Community-Friendly” Airport.  This theme’s primary thrust is that the airport must be made compatible with the surrounding community by reducing (or eliminating) various kinds of aircraft operations.  The banning of jets and elimination of flight schools was the most common request, followed by shortening of the runway and moving operations to other nearly airports.  Other sub-themes include proper policing of the ‘fly-friendly’ program, and making sure the city ordinance intended to ban pattern flying in the evenings and on weekends and holidays is no-longer circumvented by the flight schools.  Improved safety systems, noise abatement, and increased fines and penalties for pilots violating any ordinance rounded out this theme.

E. Environmental Design Improvements.  This theme appears to track the ‘green’ theme identified in other community surveys, but without the limitation that aircraft operations remain essentially “as is” implied by theme ‘C’ above.  The theme advocates open space and other environmentally friendly alternate uses for the aviation land.  Though described very briefly in this report, it is clear from numerically based community surveys (CASMAT and OPA) that this ‘theme’ and the more aggressive version of the same theme (see ‘F’ below) has widespread support.

Intentionally, no numeric data of any kind is presented in the MIG report – everything is expressed in terms like “some attendees”, “a few attendees”, “a large number of attendees” etc.  This eliminates any ability to tell what most people want from this kind of report and allows every position, no matter how widely held, to continue forward in the debate as an equal to all others.  This may be a standard ‘visioning’ technique, but it is unclear how this approach is moving the debate and decision process forward in any concrete way.

F. Closure of SMO and Development of Alternative Land Uses.  This theme takes the firm position that the airport should be eliminated completely and is not compatible with the surrounding neighborhood, or with the stated positions of the City of Santa Monica regarding environmental issues, quality of life, and sustainability.  The theme, like the CASMAT survey, details a variety of alternate uses suggested for the airport land.  The results of the CASMAT and OPA surveys tell us that numerically, this is the most widely supported outcome of all ‘themes’ detailed in the MIG report.

G. City:Stand with Residents! This theme details the disenfranchisement felt by the community and the anger towards the City that the failure to consider the needs of residents over those of aviation interests has engendered.  The community feels that the City needs to listen to what its residents want, and to act upon those wishes.

Section 6 of the report presents recommendations by the participants for the City to consider during Phase 3 of the visioning process.  The recommendations are broken into four main categories:

a) Supplementary Information Requests.  Details additional information that should be made available to the community by airport staff in order to ensure the public is well informed on airport matters.  These recommendations are primarily targeted at the issues outlined in theme ‘A’.

b) Legal Strategies to Challenge the FAA. Details participants suggestions for how the City should proceed or might prevail in its dealings with the FAA regarding SMO’s future.

c) Potential Community Actions.  Suggestions for improved community involvement relating to creating ad hoc working groups and regarding the airport commission.  This section also documents the emerging likelihood of legal action by the community against the City in order to make the City respond to community wishes given the perception (detailed in theme A) that the City agenda regarding SMO is catering to aviation interests while ignoring the community.

d) Expanded Community Outreach and Political Engagement.  This section presents extensive recommendations primarily respondent to theme ‘A’, that is to address community perceptions of being ignored in the visioning process.

A more in-depth analysis of the text in the ‘participant comment cards’ attached as an appendix to the MIG report allows us to partition the cards into the following five categories: pro-status quo, pro-change, anti-visioning, thank you, and neutral.

If we ignore the anti visioning, thank you, and neutral comments, the pro-status quo vs pro-change responses were 19% for pro-status quo and 81% for pro-change.  This matches almost exactly with the statistics from other surveys mentioned above, further validating the reality of actual percentage opinions in the community.  The 19% pro-status quo figure is not surprising given that 19% of session attendees admitted to being a pilot or a member of an aviation advocacy group. The City must recognize that at least 82% of all participants in every survey want aircraft operations significantly reduced or eliminated.  In actuality, the anti-visioning responses might well be considered as pro-change, which would bring the percentages in the city sessions up to 86%.  We have not done this in our analysis in order to be conservative.  Despite the deliberate non-numeric approach to the MIG visioning process, there is no escaping that these percentages confirm the findings of other community surveys.

Session  | Pro-status quo | pro-change | anti city visioning | thank you | neutral | total |

———|—————-|————|———————|———–|———|——-|

1/21/12  |                |     3      |         5           |           |         |   8   |

1/28/12  |       1        |     3      |                     |    1      |         |   5   |

2/4/12   |                |     3      |                     |    4      |   1     |   8   |

2/7/12   |       5        |     6      |                     |           |   1     |  12   |

2/8/12   |       2        |     1      |                     |    4      |   1     |   8   |

2/9/12   |       3        |     4      |                     |    2      |   1     |  10   |

2/17/12  |       1        |     5      |         1           |    1      |         |   8   |

2/22/12  |       1        |     2      |                     |    1      |   3     |   7   |

3/2/12   |       2        |     3      |         1           |           |         |   6   |

3/3/12   |       1        |     9      |                     |    1      |         |  11   |

3/10/12  |                |     6      |                     |           |   2     |   8   |

3/14/12  |       2        |     6      |                     |    1      |         |   9   |

3/15/12  |       2        |     5      |                     |    1      |   2     |  10   |

3/16/12  |                |    15      |                     |    2      |   2     |  19   |

3/17/12  |                |     3      |                     |    2      |   2     |   7   |

3/21/12  |                |     5      |                     |           |         |   5   |

3/24/12  |                |     8      |                     |    1      |         |   9   |

———|—————-|————|———————|———–|———|——-|

Total    |      20        |     87     |         7           |   21      |  15     | 150   |

———|—————-|————|———————|———–|———|——-|

Percent  |      19%       |     81%    |         5%          |   14%     |  10%    | 100%  |

———|—————-|————|———————|———–|———|——-|

Link:May 8, 2012 Staff Report to City Council.

Also posted (link above) is the City staff report and Phase 3 recommendations to the City Council based on the MIG report described above.  This document begins with an overview of the MIG report findings including the various identified positions and themes.  

Staff acknowledge that the airport needs to become a better neighbor and offers the voluntary pattern flying agreement with the flight school as an example of progress that has been made.  Staff also thinks that, in addition to all subsidies it already provides for airport users (which result in significant fiscal impact to the City and thus the taxpayers), the City should further subsidize flight schools to encourage them to perform more of their pattern flying operations at other local airports.  This is hardly consistent with the public request for flight school operations to be curtailed, and is certainly non-respondent to public questioning of why the City is in the business of subsidizing aviation companies.

In response to the MIG report recommendation to improve accuracy and transparency of information from the airport, staff lists the information that is currently available, and posits that this information is sufficiently respondent to the concerns expressed in the report.  Clearly this is not the case, otherwise the report would not have contained so many recommendations in this area.  Staff then allows that (as suggested in the MIG report), perhaps the Airport Commission should have a significant role in the visioning process.  This is in stark contrast to staff’s recent efforts to prevent the Airport Commission from engaging in any visioning activity. In a statement from City Manager Rod Gould he makes clear that City staff were instructed not to attend the Airport Commission visioning workshop when it recently went ahead despite staff opposition.  There is clear duplicity in these conflicting positions, and this brings us back to theme ‘A’, which is that the public believe City staff have a clear agenda regarding the airport that aims to keep things “as is” and indeed, to further invest in aviation operations.

The staff report then goes on to explain how difficult it will be for the City to pursue even partial closure of the airport due to the potential for litigation with the FAA.  Once again this position is in direct opposition to the wishes of 82% of surrounding residents, and is consistent with perceptions that there is already a pre-ordained ‘outcome’, and that the visioning process is a sham.  Staff prefers to negotiate with the FAA for voluntary changes, specifically those that will subsidize aviation interests to move some operations elsewhere.  In other words the City should now additionally pay aviation companies based at SMO to fly elsewhere.   This is not exactly an aggressive position on the part of the City, and is certain to meet with vigorous community and tax-payer opposition.

1) Improved transparency and communications regarding the airport.  On this I believe we can all agree.

2) Instituting all the items in the aviation interests ‘talking points’ list including auxiliary power units, mid-field run-up, and additional alternative fuel sales.  As stated previously this represents further capital investment in aircraft operations (over and above the $2.97 million already planned in the next two years).  While these changes may provide minimal relief, they represent business as usual, and will not in any way satisfy community objections to SMO.  Indeed this additional, possibly wasted investment (assuming of course the visioning result is not already pre-ordained!), may generate further opposition.

3) Identifying best practices from other airports.  ‘Studying’ aviation fees (though no commitment to actually do anything about them).  Additional taxpayer funded subsidies for flight schools to fly patterns elsewhere.  Making all kinds of other investments in SMO aviation infrastructure including new GPS system, improved blast wall, runway safety etc.  Bottom line this recommendation advocates spending more money on the airport to improve the facilities for aviation interests.  Nothing related to mitigating community impact.

4) Evaluate possible improvements to ‘non-aviation’ land.  This restricts the evaluation to the one parcel that is already designated as non-aviation, in other words don’t do anything to any aviation parcels (except of course invest in improving them as detailed in 2 and 3 above).  This is no more than re-arranging the deck chairs.

5)  Continue discussion with the FAA to avoid the potential for conflict between the FAA and the city.

Taken as a whole, these staff recommendations basically preclude any consideration of options for SMO other than continuing to operate the airport essentially “as is”.  This despite the fact that 4 out of the 5 ‘positions’ identified in the MIG report detail public desire to significantly reduce aircraft operations, and in particular eliminate jets and flight schools completely.  Staff is basically recommending position 5 of the MIG report, that is responding to the desires of the 19% of pilots and aviation advocates at the sessions, and ignoring those of the remaining 81% of attendees.  This is confirmed by the 82% in the CASMAT survey that hold one of the other four positions, and the 84% in the OPA survey that hold the same.

This path can only reinforce the public perceptions regarding City staff’s agenda, and their determination to prevent the visioning process from causing any significant change to SMO operations.   If the City Council decides to follow staff’s recommendations, it is clear that a show-down between the community and the City, likely including litigation, is in our near-term future.  The City Council would be wise to consider this possibility before rubber-stamping staff Phase-3 recommendations.